


Lean To Turn

by gnimmish



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It of Sorts, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 12:44:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18660694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnimmish/pseuds/gnimmish
Summary: What she’s feeling now isn’t quite pain. It’s a strangeness, vague yet pressing, a sort of bruised feeling under her chest. Thanos is dead. He will never, ever return. The life she knew is over. She will never have to wake afraid of him again – never have to count the ways in which she will murder him, torture him, make him sorry. He will never be sorry.The morning after Thanos falls, Nebula falls apart and then comes together, with a little help from her friends.  [An everybody lives AU]





	Lean To Turn

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this before seeing Endgame, which is why it's not canon compliant and everybody's alive and in Wakanda - but I tried to bring it in line with Tony and Nebula's dynamic in particular after seeing it. 
> 
> This fic's title comes from the chorus of the Dessa song 'Velodrome', which I've always associated with Nebula.

 

It’s the very smallest hours of the morning, the sky still dark outside, the moon sinking low – Nebula cannot remember the last time she saw a sunrise. Too little time ever spent on one planet long enough. Perhaps that’s why she can’t sleep.

It’s been twelve hours since Thanos fell and the infinity gauntlet was destroyed; reality has righted itself, Earth and – as far as Nebula knows – the rest of the galaxy is restored, and the universe has settled in its own dust, saved. She has had her wounds tended to; she has eaten, bathed, changed her clothes, celebrated, at least a little, at least as far as she could. A lot of it feels faded though, rapidly so – sinking beneath a grinding exhaustion.

The only crystalline moment of the last day or so is the one just before they all went to bed – when Gamora wrapped her arms around her, held her tight like Nebula can’t remember being held ever, ever – and whispered in her ear:

“We are free, Nebula. Now rest.”

So Nebula is trying. But she can’t sleep.

Wakanda yawns across the horizon, its royal capital gently glowing in the dark beneath the balcony of the room their hosts have afforded her. The night air is warm, and smells only faintly of blood and smoke.

Nebula aches, but that isn’t unusual. She can’t remember a time when she didn’t ache, when her circuits didn’t jar and spark where they shouldn’t, when the electrics in her nervous system didn’t grind against nerve endings. She knows pain.

What she’s feeling now isn’t quite pain. It’s a strangeness, vague yet pressing, a sort of bruised feeling under her chest. Thanos is dead. He will never, ever return. The life she knew is over. She will never have to wake afraid of him again – never have to count the ways in which she will murder him, torture him, make him sorry. He will never be sorry.

 _We’re free_.

Nebula turns the words slowly over in her mind’s eye, tries to fit them into a template she can comprehend. Free to do what?

Gamora has long had a life away from the despot who called himself their father, one that she can now return to, safe and happy. Which is good. It’s important that Gamora be happy. Someone ought to be.

But Nebula is not a Guardian. She is not an Avenger like Tony Stark, she has no home planet anymore, no family who would recognise her aside from her sister, and nowhere to go.

And it’s hard to take in the enormity of the last few days when, from here, the world does not seem to have changed. The stars above still shine. This planet’s sun will soon rise the way countless other suns will rise over countless other planets throughout the universe. This planet still turns, its gravity remains, the galaxy is undisturbed, the laws of physics are intact, and she aches the way she always does.

Her arm hurts.

Nebula gets up, because continuing to sit here seems pointless, prowls the perimeter of the room she’s been given – an exorbitantly luxurious place, she thinks, almost to the point where it makes her uncomfortable – she likes sterile austerity so much better. A bare, windowless sell with a bench for sleeping and no blanket would feel safer than this. At least she would always know the direction an attack was going to come from.

 The large, soft bed here feels exposed, facing, as it does, a floor to ceiling window through which anyone could come flying if they had the right technology. The marble floor would give away her location with its reflections should she need to hide from an intruder. The lights don’t offer enough shadow for her to slip away unseen. There’s only one exit that doesn’t involve jumping from the balcony.

No, no, she doesn’t like it.

She likes the en suit bathroom, with its deep bath tub, and a shower that automatically produces hot water, and a little cabinet full of soaps and other sweet smelling things she’s fairly sure are not for eating, but look delicious. It’s much smaller than the main room, there’s no window and there is a vent in the wall that might provide a second escape route if she needs one.

She decides to sleep in here instead, dragging a pillow and blankets into the bath and making herself a nest.

But her mind will not settle, and she aches, still. The circuits in the joints of her prosthetic arm keep misfiring – small movements are worse than broader ones, somehow – her gross motor skills are unaffected but her fine ones are looser than they should be. It hasn’t been quite right since Thanos took her apart – since he used her to lure Gamora. There’s not been time to put herself back together properly.

She gets up again. She knows that Gamora is staying in a room a few doors down from this one – Nebula can ask her where the Guardians’ ship is. There will be tools on board she can use to retune her arm – or at least to detach it long enough that she can sleep, and fix it later.

The corridor outside her room is dark. She listens carefully, her hearing enhanced enough to pick up the steady breaths of those sleeping around her – she can even tell the ones she knows apart – there’s Drax snoring, and Rocket; Mantis snuffling into a pillow. Groot is awake, and playing a video game.

She reaches the door she knows Gamora is behind and hesitates. She doesn’t have to press her ear to the wood to know that Gamora is asleep – she can hear her sister, exhalations slow and even. She can hear Peter Quill, too. They must be pressed close together, because they are breathing in sync, as if they are one being drawing breath, not two.

She stands for some time outside of their door, listening, for reasons she doesn’t care to articulate to herself.

Then she moves on, feeling ridiculous, and goes looking for the living area that connects all these little rooms – the Avengers are all in another corridor, she knows, and there’s a gym, a sitting room a kitchen between them.  Perhaps there will be something to distract her there.

+++

“Hey, Blue,” Tony Stark is in the living area when Nebula stalks in, on the sofa, taking apart some kind of radio transistor. “Not sleeping either?”

“I’m hungry,” she tells him, beginning to rattle through a set of cupboards, “where’s the food in this place?”

Her arm abruptly twists, the elbow joint wrenching with a faintly electrical _pop_. Nebula grits her teeth, barely letting it break the flow of her movements – but Tony raises an eyebrow.

“That hurting you?” He asks, and Nebula shrugs.

“I’m used to pain.

“And that’s very hardcore of you, but we are currently staying in the middle of the most technologically advanced civilisation on Earth, pretty sure that kid Shuri could fix you up if you ask nicely,” Tony points out, “I mean, assuming you’re capable of asking for things nicely.”

Nebula knows that he’s teasing her because this is how he talked the whole way from Titan back to Earth. She hasn’t missed it. Much.

“I don’t ask for things.”

 “Yeah, see, that’s your problem.” Tony waves a hand at her. “You gotta know when to ask for help, Blue, take it from someone who had to learn the hard way. C’mere.”

She hesitates, still searching for food like she hasn’t heard him at all. And when she’s let the silence stretch for long enough that she can pretend this is more her idea than his, she prowls back to the couch and sits down next to him like she’s doing him a favour.

“You’d better know what you’re doing.”

“Hey,” he taps the arc reactor in his chest, “I know a thing or two about mechanical body modifications, remember? You’re not that special.”

He grabs a pair of magnifying goggles and a nano screwdriver from amongst the parts strewn on the coffee table, turns on a lamp to give him better light and carefully examines the joint in her elbow. Nebula eyes the debris all over the floor.

“What did that radio ever do to you?”

“It was looking at me funny,” he doesn’t glance up, “Jeez no wonder this is bothering you. Did someone take this out and put it back the wrong way round?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of dumbass did that?”

“Thanos, while he was torturing me.”

“Ah, yeah, that’ll do it,” Tony turns his attentions to trying to get some of the tiny, intricate circuits exposed on the elbow joint to align better and Nebula feels a silent wash of thanks that he doesn’t react, doesn’t ask for details or express his sympathies. He’d said something about being a prisoner of war, once. Perhaps he understands, just a little.

Silence descends, Tony working, Nebula supervising, occasionally redirecting his efforts –

“That won’t work.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I’ve had this arm at least ten years longer than you have. Try something else.”

Tony snorts – but he obeys.  
  
Nebula doesn’t much like other people touching her circuits – historically not something that has ever been an indicator of anything but incoming catastrophe – but of any of the idiots currently in the vicinity, Tony Stark is the least likely to completely destroy her fine motor skills in that hand.

The faint sound of microscopic electrics and the smell of solder is soothing, familiar. Nebula eases her breathing the way Gamora once taught her to, concentrating only on each moment as it occurs. Tony seems absorbed by the work. There’s no need to talk. It’s not unpleasant.

She could say she’s not sure how much times passes before Gamora walks into the room, but actually, one of the many tiny monitors embedded in her brain can tell her down to the millisecond, in multiple time zones across multiple planets. On this one, it’s two hours, thirteen minutes and six seconds.

“Nebula?” She sounds soft with sleep. She is wearing one of Peter Quill’s t-shirts and a pair of loose-fitting pants that must have been given to her by their hosts. Nebula knows there are sleeping clothes in her room somewhere, but she doesn’t want them, currently.

“Serious business going on here, Green,” Tony doesn’t look away from Nebula’s arm, “gimme a minute.”

“What is he doing?” Gamora’s stance is protective, which Nebula finds more than a little quaint. As if Gamora could possibly protect her from this single human man better than she herself could.

“He’s patching it,” Nebula tells her, “it’s glitching.”

“She probably needs the Wakandans to fix her up with something better than this – you know you’ve got rust in here?” Tony flicks the screwdriver meaningfully, “you gotta take better care of yourself, Blue.”

“There we can agree,” Gamora mutters, and Nebula rolls her eyes. She doesn’t need yet more of Gamora’s nagging concerns for her health right now.

“I’m hungry,” she tells her sister, mostly to distract her, though it’s not untrue.

Gamora treads lighter than anyone Nebula knows, but she can still track her movements around the room by sound, by the flicker of her shadow, without having to turn her head to watch. So she’s not surprised when Gamora silently hands her a plate – it’s fruit, carefully skinned and sliced, a deep sunset yellow, the flesh moist and soft. It smells sweet.

“Is it ripe?” She asks, reflexively, because this has, somehow, become a joke  between them (…they have jokes now, their relationship can bear them).

“Find out,” Gamora replies.

Nebula eats quietly. The fruit isn’t quite as sweet as it smells – it’s richer, the texture cool and satisfying. Gamora has also brought her a glass of water, and she perches on the arm of the sofa by Nebula’s side, propping her bare feet on the coffee table, resting a proprietary hand on Nebula’s shoulder.

“Seriously, Green, you’re making it harder for me to concentrate here,” Tony peers at her over his magnifying goggles.

“If you’re messing with my sister’s arm, you’re gonna do it where you can see the most dangerous woman in the galaxy watching your every move,” Gamora replies, and Nebula snorts.

“Second most dangerous.”

“I could still beat you in hand to hand combat if I wanted.”

“No you couldn’t,” Nebula tosses her head, nonchalantly, “you’re out of practice. I’ve seen you. Your time with the Guardians has made you soft.”

“I could beat you in hand to hand combat after four years in a coma, let alone four years with the Guardians.”

“Ladies,” Tony pauses, holding up his screwdriver, “posture after your local insomniac genius has finished fixing the very sensitive alien tech in this arm, please.”

Nebula ignores him, glancing up at her sister curiously. Gamora’s hand still rests on her shoulder. There’s no trace of what used to be acrid between them in her gaze – only a tired, friendly exasperation. They only play at rivalry, these days, because those old patterns of conversation are so familiar, so easy. But they mean different things than they once did.

“I’ll prove it to you,” she says, casually, and Gamora’s mouth quirks.

“You want to go train, later?”

“When he’s done,” Nebula nods at Tony, “I’ll best you.”

“No you won’t,” Gamora slides off the sofa, standing and stretching, “but I’ll train with you, sister. If you promise to get some rest first.”

Nebula grimaces. “I tried.”

“I know,” Gamora gives her good arm a squeeze, “try again.”

“And, you’re done,” Tony sits back, peeling the goggles off his face and pinching the bridge of his nose, “at least – as done as I can get you. You seriously need to look into replacing most of this arm, it’s so fried you’re basically a walking fire hazard.”

Nebula tests her elbow joint carefully – it’s smoother, the static crackling has stopped, her fingers are no longer numb at the tips.

“Thank you, Mr Stark.”

“Don’t mention it,” he shrugs, “now take Green’s advice, get some rest.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“My wife and kid are gonna be arriving in a couple of hours and I plan to be awake for that,” Tony dismisses her, “you have no excuse. Go to bed, young lady.”

“Come,” Gamora holds a hand out to her, and Nebula fights an ancient instinct to be wary of such a gesture.

Gamora leads her back toward her room, and, to Nebula’s surprise, follows her inside.

“What did you – ” Gamora sees Nebula’s stripped bed, the missing comforter and pillows – and then spies the bathroom. “Of course.”

“Anything could come through those windows,” Nebula tells her, stubbornly, as Gamora drags her bedclothes back onto the bed.

“Nothing is going to come through them, Nebula, and you will not get any sleep in the damned bathtub.”

“You don’t know that!”

“Yes I do, because Thanos is dead and we are safe here,” Gamora throws the comforter onto the bed and turns to stare her sister down. “You are safe, Nebula. You don’t have to live like this anymore.”

“You don’t know how I live.”

“I know enough.”

Gamora puts her hands on her hips, and though her gaze is penetrating, it’s not unkind. They have had conversations like this one before.

“Lie down,” she climbs onto the newly made bed, pats the spot next to her. “Just until the sun comes up.”

Nebula rolls her eyes, but acquiesces, even though she has no idea what the point of this exercise is.

Gamora dims the lights and they lie in the dark, lit only by the stars and the city outside their window. The bed is comfortable, Nebula has to admit, though she’s still certain she’ll never be able to sleep anywhere so exposed.

“You remember when we were little?” Gamora asks, stretching lazily.

“I try not to.”

“I mean before we spent every waking moment trying to kill each other.”

“No.”

“I used to get you to sleep by telling you about the sunsets back home,” Gamora sighs, “since there weren’t any to see on Thanos’ ship.”

That does, in fact, stir some distant memory – but Nebula shakes it hastily away. She hasn’t survived this long by dwelling on the past.

“But I never asked about the sunsets on your planet,” Gamora continues, quietly, “I always wished I had. Do you remember them?”

“No.”

She doesn’t remember the world where she was born. She doesn’t remember her family. Her mother. She won’t remember. If she remembers, she’ll sink into a pit of grief so deep she’s not sure she’ll ever crawl out again.

“The skies on your world were pink, weren’t they?”

“Because of the pollution in the atmosphere,” Nebula closes her eyes, trying to put aside the image even as it crystalises in her mind, “our sunsets were purple, green – blue sometimes.”

A horrible ache seizes her chest, and she has to stop, keeping her eyes tightly closed.

Gamora takes her hand, squeezes gently as Nebula feels herself begin to cry for the first time in a decade.

+++

24 hours after Thanos falls, after reality rights itself, Peter Quill rolls out of bed and finds Gamora gone.

Given that she’s been gone in a much more permanent way quite recently, he has a moment of cold dread before he remembers that he got her back – that she crawled out of the shattered light of the Soul stone, wheezing and frightened but alive. She’d needed a hug and a drink and then she’d been ready to get up and fight like she hadn’t just experienced her own death and rebirth at the hands of an asshole megalomaniac with a death wish.

There’s a note on her side of the bed, anyway.

_Gone to train w/Nebula  
-Gx_

She’s only put the ‘x’ because he does that when he leaves her notes – he had to tell her they mean ‘kisses’, and she still finds that absurd. But she knows he likes it.

He brushes sleep from his eyes and heads to the balcony of their bedroom – a morning full of sunlight, a country gently humming with peace and hope sprawled toward the horizon. Peter isn’t sure how he feels about being back on Earth, especially under these circumstances, and there hasn’t exactly been time to sit and process his emotions on the matter. A little part of him is itching to be back on the Benatar, back on a mission, back to a normal place doing normal things.

But Wakanda isn’t a bad place to wake up to, he guesses. Like, he’s definitely woken up to worse. 

And beneath the balcony, a few hundred feet down, there’s Gamora and her sister – twirling around a courtyard, blades bright in the morning sunlight, sparring. Even from way up here he can tell they’re not at full capacity – the whole scene would be louder and bloodier if they were – what they’re doing looks more like a kind of stabby dance off than a real fight. But Peter appreciates that this is how Gamora lets off steam. He has his music, Groot has his game, Mantis eats, Drax naps, Rocket has a tendency to build high impact explosives and Gamora needs to train.

He shuffles off to find breakfast, and a better vantage point.

+++  


The stretch and pull of muscle and circuitry into a steady routine gives Nebula something to concentrate on – a moment to be in. She pitches and whirls with Gamora around the little courtyard they have found to spar in, counting her steps, her heartbeats, the jar of her weapon against her sister’s.

The dawn sunlight is casting only faint warmth down, a mist still burning off the ground – the distant sky is a perfect pearlescent blue.

“He used to make us recite poetry to the rhythm, do you remember?” Gamora grits out as she ducks Nebula’s blade and feints for her ribs.

“Fuck his poetry,” Nebula spits, and Gamora laughs, raw and real and joyful.

She’s aware that Peter Quill has emerged onto the courtyard steps and is sat eating in his pyjamas while he watches them – that the other Guardians are wobbling out into the new day behind him– Mantis still yawning widely as she sips something hot and sweet, Groot grumbling about the itchy moss growing on his chin. Their proximity stopped feeling suspicious to her some time ago, but the presence of a number of the Avengers immediately makes her itch – Steve Rogers on a balcony a few floors up, Clint Barton and Natasha Romanov on another. Though they are, ostensibly, her allies – her friends – she does not know them well – and she wanted time alone with her sister.

Nobody but the daughters of Thanos can possibly know what they have woken up to today.

“This is unsatisfying,” Nebula says, rolling under Gamora’s sword and then back onto her feet in one fluid movement – a trick Thanos took her left foot for, after she failed to learn it sufficiently as a child. “I wanted a challenge.”

Gamora shrugs and tosses her head – they come to a mutual halt. Nebula feels the creek of insufficient wiring in her chest as the pump where her lungs should be forces oxygen through her body at twice the speed it normally should. She thumps at her sternum, once – then twice – the pump sputter-stops, then returns to the correct speed. 

“What about that?” Gamora is pointing at an open space with wooden climbing structures, a few hundred feet down the slope from their building on the royal palace grounds. Nebula peers down at it, evaluating. Some sort of training ground? Close enough.

“Yes, let’s go.”

They each clear the first few obstacles easily enough – but they all required a degree of strength and concentration that Nebula finds absorbing. She swings across rows of metal bars using only her hands, scrambles over climbing walls and through swinging tires.

“Race me!” She demands of Gamora, and Gamora’s smile is fierce as she agrees.

They leap and pirouette along parallel balance beams – Gamora sets the pace (damn her), flipping forward, backward, cartwheeling, spinning on her toes, neat and slight and deadly as she ever was – and for a moment Nebula is the awkward, ugly, useless child she once was – a pathetic, snivelling thing mouldering in her sister’s shadow.

But she is an adult now, and Thanos is dead, and Gamora’s company is gentle in the golden morning air as she calls behind her –

“You can do it, Nebula! Higher, higher, jump now!”

Nebula does her neatest back handspring off the balance beam, just to prove that she can. “You are insufferable.”

“You have much longer legs than me, you should be able to jump.”

“I don’t need to jump, I’m faster than you.”

“I got to the end of the course before you did!”

“No you didn’t,” Nebula wipes the sweat away from where it’s beading on the half of her forehead that isn’t made of metal. “We still have to get to the top of that.”

She’s pointing at a sheer wooden pole several hundred feet high, at the furthest end of the yard. Gamora snorts dismissively.

 “Climb it then – I’d prefer not to fall and snap my neck today.”

“Scared?” Nebula arches an eyebrow at her – Gamora leases a puff of air from her mouth up into her hair, blowing stray strands out of her eyes – she surveys the pole doubtfully.

“How do you know it’s meant for climbing at all?”

Nebula shrugs. “It’s here, isn’t it?”

She steps decisively up to it – it’s wide, polished, smooth – it must once have been an enormous tree, stripped, sanded, polished. There are no branches, no knots, nothing to serve as a foothold, or a grip to pull herself up with. And yet the challenge of it beckons her. She is not Gamora – she has never ducked away from a problem, even an unsolvable one. She’d rather dash herself against it until she has fallen to pieces than tolerate the failure of resigning.

Perhaps that isn’t sane. But she’s never much cared for sanity.

She circles the pole twice, slowly, as Gamora sits down and swigs from the water bottle she brought with her. She surveys the training ground again, then looks back to the pole – finding something nagging at her awareness.

“Why aren’t there two?” She asks, more of herself than her sister.

“Mm?” Gamora glances up, unbothered.

“There are two of everything else,” Nebula points out, “two sets of bars, two sets of swings, two climbing walls, two frames, two balance beams – why are there not two of these poles?”

Gamora gets back onto her feet, her interest piqued. “That is odd.”

“So the course is made for two people to traverse at once, to test them against each other, perhaps,” Nebula circles the pole again, a though forming just beneath the surface of her mind. “But then they each arrive here and…”

She stops, trying to gauge the circumference of the pole – finally steps close and stretches her arms around it, encompassing just over half it’s width in her grip – so that if someone stood on the other side and mirrored her, they could hold her hands.

She looks back at Gamora. “I’ll need your help.”

Gamora quirks her head, coming to her sister’s side to stare up at the top of the pole, then back at Nebula.

“It’s designed to require two people to get to the top.”

“Oh,” Gamora circles round to the other side, her fingers tracing the wood as she goes, “yes, I see.”

Nebula feels a brief sting of triumph at having proven herself correct – she reaches out impatiently. “You will have to hold my hands.”

“Try not to snap mine off, then.” Gamora knots her fingers with her sister’s, gripping tight – her hands are smaller than Nebula’s, calloused from sword work, scarred from worse. A memory – as bright and biting as it is unwelcome – yawns across her consciousness: an incident, a long, long time ago, when Thanos had threatened to cut off Gamora’s thumbs and Gamora had sobbed until Nebula had begged Thanos to take hers instead. She had so desperately wanted Gamora to love her.

Thanos had laughed, and locked them both in separate cells for three days without food.

How long since she last held Gamora’s hands? Did she ever?

“Once, in the dark,” Gamora speaks, abruptly, as if she has been following Nebula’s exact train of thought. “When he would make us sleep in those crates you hated so much, because they were so dark. And you were so little, you wouldn’t stop crying, and I knew he would punish us all if you weren’t quiet. So I held your hand until you stopped.”

Nebula glances down at her sister’s small hands so secure in her own, then up again at the distant sky – bright daylight – safety – freedom.

“We’ll have to keep tension in our arms and push back off the wood with our feet,” she says, “are you strong enough to hold my weight?”

“You’re not that much taller than me, Nebula.”

“But I do have a lot more metal in my body than you.”

Gamora shrugs. “My species’ muscles are naturally denser than yours.”

“Your species are puny green people who experience attractions to pathetic terrans who like strange music.”

Gamora snorts.

It takes a minute (…three minutes, thirty two seconds) to get their feet under them on the pole, to establish the right centre of gravity between them – leaning away from each other to hold each other up.

Nebula sets a foot – slips. Sets a foot – slips again – grunts in frustration.

“Pull back harder,” Gamora advises, “push with your legs.”

“I can do it!”

“I know!”

Though Nebula cannot see her sister’s face, she can feel Gamora’s grip, iron-tight and firm. She sets a foot and leans back, straightening her legs as far as she can, until the delicate tension they need between them to gain leverage finally sets itself in place.

“We have to take steps at the same time.”

“I can see that!”

“So how do you suggest we manage?” Gamora demands.

“We count, obviously.”

“Obviously.”

“Alright – one – ” Nebula takes a step and promptly loses traction, slipping back the half a foot or so to the ground. “Are you kidding me?!”

“Right foot or left foot?” Gamora peers around the pole at her.

“What?”

“Which one first?!”

“Oh – left.”

“Your left or my left?”

“My left!”

“Alright then.”

“One!” Nebula counts, and this time, the tension holds.

Their progress is slow but firm, relentless, step by vertical step – Nebula holds her sister’s and knows that she will not fall.

“Head up,” Gamora tells her, unnecessarily. “One.”

Nebula allows herself a grim smile. “Two. Knees bent.”

As children, Thanos had made them practice walking tightropes, hundreds of feet from the ground – no net, no mat, of course – and Gamora, being shorter, with her lower centre of gravity, had always had an easier time balancing. Gamora had been better with heights, too. Nebula – lanky, awkward and full of fear – had wobbled and fallen, broken her legs, cracked her skull, and on one especially humiliating occasion, thrown up.

“You mustn’t look down,” Gamora had whispered to her – across the few feet separating their ropes as they trod across them, “keep your knees bent. _Head up_ , Nebula!”

She had done it – jerked her head up, fought all her natural instincts to be smaller, to be less of a target, blinking back pathetic tears, swallowing bile – and she had not fallen.

The sky beckons. The flat top of the pole is almost within reach. There are birds singing. How long since Nebula last heard birds singing?

“This is almost pleasant,” she remarks, and hears Gamora’s huff of laughter. “Two. One. Two. One.”

“Two. Will you stay with us, when we leave this place?”

“One. Yes.” The answer is easier than Nebula expected.

“Good. We’ll clear out your bunk. Two.”

“What’s in my bunk? One.”

“A number of explosive devices, something Drax has been fermenting for at least three years and one of Groot’s arms.”

“I didn’t know his arms came off.”

“They don’t normally. This one met with an unfortunate accident. That’s why we keep the explosives in your bunk now.”

“Practical of you.”

“We’ll put them somewhere else.”

They have to stop – the top of the pole is just broad enough that they should both be able to stand on it, but getting from their current position to that without both plummeting back to earth may be challenging.

“What do you think?” Gamora asks, “could you keep hold of me if I dropped one of your hands?”

“I could throw you,” Nebula considers.

“I would prefer you not.”

“Then we will both have to let go at the same time. Your arms are shorter than mine. Are you sure you can reach up far enough?”

“If I can’t, you’ll catch me.”

“You have a lot of faith in someone who has tried to kill you more than once.”

“I have a lot of faith in someone who has saved my life more than once.”

Nebula resists the urge to roll her eyes, because she knows it will send a spark across the loose wire just behind her eyesocket and she doesn’t need that sort of pain right now.

“On three, then.”

“One – ”

“Two – ”

“Three!”

Nebula lets go of her sister and throws one arm up, over the top of the pole – her weaker arm, the one Tony patched for her the night before –  scrabbling for purchase with her feet. With the stronger arm she reaches further, feeling for where Gamora is doing the same, grasping her sister’s wrist.

Gamora pulls, and Nebula forces herself upward with a slip-shod grind of knees and elbows – and somehow she has dragged them both on to the top of the pole, with a circumference perhaps a little greater than Captain America’s shield.

They can stand toe to toe. But they elect to sit back to back.

“It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?” Gamora asks – her weight is warm against Nebula’s shoulders, her head tipped back so that her cheek rests against her sister’s ear.

Nebula eases in a breath through the rattling circuitry of her lungs.

Birdsong. Blue sky. Freedom. “Beautiful. Yes.”

 


End file.
